From: cyber.trekker@metauniverse.net   
      
   Thomas Mayer wrote:   
      
   > SFAM wrote:   
   >> [snip] If everything is free (no patents),   
   >> the incentive for creating wealth (cell phones, cell phone networks,   
   >> emoticons on cell phones, for instance) dissipates rapidly. I think you'd   
   >> find that this outcome infringes on your natural rights far more than   
   >> having to pay for stuff.   
   >   
   > I'm not sure about that. If inventions were only made, when you can get   
   > money from them, then for a long time in human history no inventions   
   > would have been made. It's the same argument that the copyright industry   
   > uses for using DRM and suing P2P users. I think, most inventions, music   
   > etc are made by people that just try to express themselves, though I   
   > have to admit, it takes a lot of money to develop a product from the   
   > inventions, so you have a point, if you only think in a   
   > pseudo-free-market sense, the way the world economy works nowadays.   
      
   Most people can not get their heads around the possibility of there being   
   other and better or alternative systems and methods of doing things. Bring   
   someone up in a particular system and that's all they know as well as can   
   see, understand and accept. Those who break free from this travesty are   
   indeed few. Merely espouse the accepted line in an intellectual and closed   
   set of arguments in what amounts to an infantile game and one is deemed   
   intelligent. Extend one's thought world beyond the concepts of the times   
   and one is looked upon as a deluded fool at the best or a mad person to be   
   feared and locked up or exterminated at the worst.   
      
   Such people who are bound in a system of thought judge everything from the   
   current or past systems and accepted ideas or from their respective   
   personal concepts and biases. They refuse point blank to accept any   
   alternative or there even being a possibility of a viable alternative   
   system. They blindly accept authority as the last word on anything and   
   everything. In effect, they are conceptually blind - responding as though   
   they are automatons espousing the prevailing dictates and mandates of   
   authorities, all the while perceiving those authorities to be almost   
   god-like and partaking of the infallibility of gods. They are the very   
   antithesis of the questioning mind of Socrates who refused to accept the   
   word of authority on a blind faith approach. They don't really think for   
   themselves, as their thoughts are conditioned by the thoughts of others.   
   They are caught in the Matrix, as it were. Outside of their dreamworld is a   
   vast universe of ideas to explore, but they are content with limitation and   
   imposing that limitation onto others, with being asleep and not knowing   
   that they are asleep while attempting to force the same condition of sleep   
   onto others.   
      
   If a concept, an idea, a vision, to extend the illustration further, can   
   only be created and developed with and through money, then whatever it is   
   cannot be worth much. Some of the best things that humanity has created and   
   developed have been done with an insignificant sum of money or no money   
   invested in it at all. If one sees things either solely or primarily in   
   terms of money, then one is going about things in the wrong way and it will   
   have far less beneficial results flowing from it to oneself, to others and   
   to the world as a whole.   
      
   The so-termed free market is the pseudo-free-market that you so correctly   
   designate as such. There is no real free market economy in the world. All   
   is illusion foisted upon humanity by those with vested interests and impure   
   motives. It's similar to the idea of democratic nations, for there is no   
   real democracy anywhere in the world. All is appearance only. Give the   
   appearance of a free market or of a democracy and those of whom refuse to   
   think for themselves believe there to be a free market and a democracy in   
   reality. Unfortunately, as it has been said before, tell the people a lie   
   long enough and the people begin to believe it as the truth.   
      
   It would appear that an interest in cyberpunk literature, movies and   
   lifestyle doesn't necessarily free the mind sufficiently of the cyberpunk   
   enthusiast.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)